The present invention generally relates to the field of communications and more particularly, is directed to a method and apparatus that may be used to facilitate meetings, conferences and forums involving discussion or conversation between participants. The invention may also be used as a form of entertainment or to enhance Internet cafes and leisure facilities. Other embodiments of the invention may be used to facilitate networking sessions, training sessions, educational programs and public consultations. The invention may be utilized as well by market research to constitute study groups for qualitative research and by media and news gathering organizations that require direct access to public opinion.
Conferences of various types where participants meet to converse and receive information are well known in the prior art. Typically, a speaker speaks about a subject that may be of interest to other participants who serve as a passive audience to a single monolithic lecture. The subject being discussed, however, may not be of interest to all members of the audience. There is limited scope for participants to communicate with the speaker and very limited scope for interaction between participants. Accordingly, the needs of all participants may not be served.
The emergence of the Internet has had, and will continue to have for the foreseeable future, a great impact on the world's ability to communicate. The Internet makes it easy for participants to set-up and join forum groups to communicate with other participants who share interests. No conference facility yet exists, however, that provides an efficient framework which enables participants to do this in person. Existing live conference facilities do not support structured and dynamic networked communication. Existing live conference facilities do not provide an efficient interactive technology to enable groups of participants to concurrently discuss a plurality of explicitly defined subjects within a structured and modifiable framework.
Discussion groups are also well known. Current live discussion group structures have a major problem when the discussion transforms into another subject. Some members may wish to continue the original subject and others may wish to continue with a variant. Furthermore the original subject may not have been of interest to members of a parallel group while the variant is more interesting to them than the subject they are discussing. The rigidity of existing discussion groups inhibits mutation of the subject matter and the likelihood of beneficial interactions.
Virtual discussion groups are also known in the art. Virtual discussion groups, for example those conducted by e-mail or web-cam, have major disadvantages in that many complex components of communication are lost even if images of them are transmitted. Significantly, the “cues” that provide the higher order protocols to direct discussion are not effectively reproduced by these systems. These “cues” include, for example, body language, facial expressions, tone and inflection of voice. Such “cues” play an important role in directing and shaping the exchange between participants. Attempts have been made to add a degree of “personality” to electronic communications, especially in respect to e-mail messages. For example, many e-mail users use a smiling or frowning face symbol to indicate their mood to the receiving party. While doing so improves the communication experience, it does not replace the benefit of face-to-face discussion during a communication exchange.
Live face-to-face communication between users conveys more information and allows greater interactivity than communication systems that rely on audio, video or digital technologies. It is evident that the transduction and transmission of verbal and non-verbal visual communication signals by these systems can only result in the loss of information and the loss of interactivity between users. A communications system that facilitates live face-to-face communication will have many significant advantages.
Existing communications systems transduce and transmit communication signals between users. In prior communications systems, communication between users takes place primarily through the communication system itself. There is no disclosure or suggestion of the use of a physically embodied communications system to structure and coordinate live face-to-face discussion amongst groups of users.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for improved communications systems and methods over those presently known in the art.